Random Bits 18
by Nashiil
Summary: Final Chapter Up! Exploring a fog-shrouded island can be really fun. Especially when strange herbs are involved.
1. Chapter 1

Okay! After weeks of waiting, here is RB18! Sorry if it seems short, but I didn't want to give away too much of the plot right away!

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Random Bits 18 **

**Chapter 1**

**:Setting **- A heavy fog has rolled in to envelop the small sea-side village of Kilika, preventing Yuna and her friends from making their way home after a long trip spent making the rounds to Spira's temples. Since the weather has rendered travel impossible, the group is stuck in Kilika until conditions improve. **:**

**:Location - Kilika Island - **Afternoon. With so much free time on their hands, Tidus, Wakka, and Rikku are exploring the jungle. They are now lost.**:**

Their adventure had begun earlier that day, with Tidus wanting to explore the island, now that he wasn't busy trying to save Yuna and Spira from annihilation. The trio of adventurers hadn't let the thick blanket of fog, enshrouding the entire island dampen their spirits, oh no. They had plucked up their courage and boldly set off to discover an already discovered island and seek out already seen wonders. So with map in hand, they set out and cheerfully ignored all words of caution from the locals about how dangerous the island could be under the current weather conditions. And thus, the small band had marched confidently (hindered only slightly by well meaning and concerned Kilikan's) into the fog.

Several hours of wandering later…

"Hey! I found some food!" Tidus called to Rikku and Wakka, who were poking around in the surrounding foliage in case someone had thoughtfully concealed a box of assorted snacks, or a whole roasted chocobo. Grabbing the slightly damp hunk of travel bread, Tidus pushed through the bush he'd been inspecting and showed his discovery to his two companions. "Yay!" Rikku chirped, as she and Wakka crowded around Tidus.

With Wakka in the group it was easy to crowd just about anything. Wakka could crowd all by himself. "Where did you find it?" the former Blitzball Captain inquired, as Rikku began rooting through the bag her companion had found. "I got it off of that guy." the son of Jecht replied cheerfully, parting the bushes to reveal a sad, slumped figure.

"That's a dead body!" gasped Rikku in horror. Then after a closer look, "No Way! He's got an official Barely-Clad Siblings band pendant!"

"Hey, come on you two, "Wakka cautioned nervously, as the two teens searched the body, "It's against Yevon to desecrate the dead."

"Yevon's dead, so it's not like he cares." Rikku replied impertinently, as she relieved the body of the pendant.

"Yeah, and it's not like _he's_ going to be needing to eat anytime soon." Tidus added, gathering up what food was left in the deceased's pack.

Wakka took a moment to digest the statement. The retarded dust bunny (which Auron swore constituted the entirety of Wakka's brain) got its finger far enough up its metaphorical nose to poke a few brain cells awake. A row ensued as Ethics and Morals argued with Hunger over the question of robbing/defiling the dead. Hunger eventually won because it can scream louder. Besides, the guy did have a really nice pair of sandals…

About an hour later, the trio was huddled around a boiling pot. Rikku, being female, never left Home without a length of string, a few rubber bands, a paperclip, and a safety pin in her pocket. With these simple items, a woman goes prepared for any emergency (like a broken trouser zipper, or in the event that her plain crashes on a deserted island and she has to build her own strip mall to stave off boredom until help arrives.) But, because Rikku was also AlBhed, she also carried a hammer, a few scraps of sheet metal, and a soldering tool.

The blond girl stirred the thick batch of Whatever Stew (as in 'whatever is laying around') in its lumpy pot (because you can't beat a pot shaped pot out on a rock shaped rock) and added a few packets of the strange powder from the dead man's pack. "Look at all of these!" Tidus said in quiet awe as he sifted through the pile of plastic baggies. "He sure did have a lot of them."

The pack had been stuffed full with the little bags. Each contained only a few ounces of a variety of what looked like powdered herbs. Among the baggies, there had also been several small boxes of tiny dried up mushrooms. There was something not-quite-right about the little baggies. Who walked around with a pack full of powdered herbs and mushrooms? A little warning buzzer was going off in Wakka's head. When he was a kid, his village had been plagued by strange peddlers selling odd things in baggies. All the children had been warned to avoid the strangers, who set up tents that leaked strange smells and suspicious clouds of smoke. A light bulb flickered on the red haired man's head (but only after being tapped with a broom handle a few times first) as the foggy memory surfaced.

"Hey, hey, I know what those are!" Wakka blurted, pointing in that annoying fashion of people who were never taught to look with their eyes and not with their hands. "There was this guy who came to our village one time, ya? And he was trying to sell little baggies like these! And he had this tent that always smelled funny and had smoke coming out the top. Our mum said we weren't to eat anything he gave us because it was 'foreign', and…I think this is the same thing!" he gibbered excitedly, holding up a baggie.

"And, that means…?" Tidus prompted.

"This guy was a traveling chef!" Wakka replied excitedly, handing Rikku some of the mushrooms.

"It's a good thing we found him then!" Rikku chirped as she stirred in the mushrooms and a few chunks of an unnamed tree dwelling mammal. It had been an easy catch, seeing as how it had just dropped out of a tree (having expired of old age and various diseases) and landed at Tidus' feet.

So far the stew consisted of river water, complete with its usual host of bowl irritating microbes (which would later reappear in a more liquidy form known as Explosive Diarrhea), a few beetles, a partially dismembered bird carcass that was missing a leg because the stray dog had pulled harder than Wakka, five small fish heads, one unlucky ragora, the rest of the travel bread, several oddly shaped purple fruits, and most of the contents of the baggies looted off the dead man, and something scraped off the bottom of Rikku's shoe. What the stew did not contain was anything that remotely resembled a butterfly, especially one that showed signs of being potentially rainbow colored. Wakka did not want to spend the next few hours with swollen, blistered lips _again_.

Several long minutes later the meat from the fish and arboreal mammal was cooking up nicely, practically falling off the bone, though it would have been more appropriate to say 'disintegrating', due more to the various diseases than the cooking method. In spite of the strangely colored steam rising from the surface, it actually smelled pretty good. The three lost travelers gathered around and inhaled appreciatively, despite the scalding heat.

No one quite knows why people, upon discovering that an action or activity is painful, proceed to deliberately repeat the act. Some psychologists theorize that it is a kind of learning mechanism. The brain says 'You know, that really hurt. But just to be sure…let's do it again.' Thus people are compelled to pick scabs, poke bruises, tough surfaces labeled 'Caution! Hot!', pluck eyebrows, shave irritated skin, and stick pennies/forks in electrical sockets (although this one has more to do with the Do It Because It Says Not To And Lets See What Happens principle.)

The DIBISNTALSWH principle is, in fact, what caused the untimely demise of the traveler that Tidus, Rikku and Wakka had just discovered. It is widely known, among users of illegal herbage, that you should never, ever, under any circumstances create your own, or mix herbs. Period. The unfortunate traveler had fallen victim to The Principle and done both, where he quickly learned that creating and mixing your own herbs induces an extraordinary and unfortunately, very terminal trip. It may have been for the best that, while off chasing gil fairies, talking clouds, and having the workings of the universe explained to him by a small winged man holding a clipboard, he was not aware that his skin turned several unnatural colors, his eyes bulged alarmingly from their sockets and began slowly spinning, his hair fell out, and his brain turned inside out before dribbling out of his nose.

Once the concoction had been dipped out into several hollowed out coconuts, which were no good in Whatever Stew, there was the sound of enthusiastic mastication as the trio ate, breaking every rule in Little Big Book of Table Manners (except the rule about no elbows on the table, because there wasn't one). A flock of starving buzzards could have done it twice as politely and with half the noise.

"Is there any more? I'm starving!" Tidus asked, gulping down his third bowl.

The boy was puzzled. He knew that smelling food could make you hungry, but not this hungry. As troubling as the thought was, Tidus' brain waved a hand dismissively and urged, _shut up and eat your food before that pink elephant over there eats it all._

_Good idea Brain! _Tidus thought in reply, eyeing the strange pink creature hovering by Wakka's left ear. Its eyed him in return and deliberately sucked up Wakka's stew through it's long trunk, beady eyes fixed on Tidus' bowl. He could almost hear it thinking _Yours is next!_

_Wait_, Tidus thought as he bent protectively over his stew, _what's an elephant? _The thoughts were wiped away as Rikku handed him another bowl. Across the fire and quite unaware of the small, bantam-sized pachyderm by his ear, Wakka was happily slurping down his stew. He paused to giggle as the fish eyes winked at him.

Rikku paid her friends little attention. She had her own set of problems. The Whatever Stew had a funny taste, like food tends to acquire as it nears its turning date. Plus the small teen had to keep fighting off the horde of little Brothers trying to steal her food. So far, whacking them on the head with her spoon between bites was working, but more of them kept appearing.

Several minutes after the small intestine absorbed the mysterious herbs and transported them throughout the blood stream, a passing Ochu wandered into the impromptu camp. It spent a few moments poking at the three slumbering forms around the burned out campfire. There was just something satisfying about poking at something. It doesn't matter what it is, but people (and other species) feel an undeniable urge to poke it. It could be a fresh turd, but someone, somewhere will want to poke it. And so, many an intrepid explorer's last words have been 'Look at the size of that fanged, clawed, spiked, and horned creature! Do you think its dangerous? Let's give it a poke!'

The Ochu lost interest. It was no fun when the humans didn't run, or at least scream a little. Humans these days just didn't know how to Flee. In the good old days, humans would streak away shrieking in lung busting, arm waving terror and at least make the chase interesting. Now they either hit you, or worse, completely ignored you as if you were as threatening as a kitten. So, with a wistful expulsion of air for the bygone days of tradition, the Ochu lumbered off.

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Say W00T! if you got the joke regarding the pendant. And have some Whatever Stew. Its got lots of nourishing...herbs.


	2. Chapter 2

Wow! An update! Here is chapter 2 of Random Bits 18. Enjoy!

**Random Bits 18**

**Chapter 2**

**:Setting **- A heavy fog has rolled in to envelop the small sea-side village of Kilika, preventing Yuna and her friends from making their way home after a long trip spent making the rounds to Spira's temples. Since the weather has rendered travel impossible, the group is stuck in Kilika until conditions improve. **:**

**:Location - Kilika Island - **Time unknown. After a hearty meal of Whatever Stew and a quick nap, our brave explorers have awakened. The fog has not lifted and they are totally lost. They are beginning to notice things are not quite right.

Rikku awoke to a world of hazy grayness…and Tidus screaming in panic, "It finally happened! The Fayths stopped dreaming and everything's _gone_! It's all gone, again!" he subsided to a miserable grumble, "Now I'm going to have to move back in with my old man."

The young Al Bhed dismissed the post-apocalyptic state of things as unimportant for now. She had bigger problems, like trying to keep her head from floating away. It felt much to light and was wobbling like a tethered balloon…and then there were the flowers. They screamed every time she moved her feet. Carefully (and to a chorus of herbal screams of terror) she picked her way towards Tidus, who had flung himself down for a good old-fashioned hissy-fit.

The Hissy Fit is the greatest weapon in every child's arsenal of "Things To Do When Told 'No'" . Some kids have it down to an art form. It starts with whining, dives into screaming and jumping up and down, and then leaps, bounds, and plunges straight into heel drumming, fist pummeling shrieking that basically embarrasses the Modern parent into submission. It does have one major drawback: Old School parents are completely unfazed and will either give one warning before taking Junior to the car for one good swat from Dad's Broad Hand of Discipline, or (if they are really Old-School) pick the kid up and give their britches a good dusting right then and there. In front of _everyone_.

Tidus paused in pummeling the ground and glanced up. "Rikku! You're still here!" he cried excitedly, leaping to his feet. Laughing nearly manically, he grabbed her up and spun in a circle with a grin of idiotic relief. He was so relieved to see his blond companion, that he didn't wonder why she had both hands clamped tightly on either side of her head.

Brains sparking from the effects of combining so many illegal herbs no one questioned Rikku when she abruptly wailed "Oh, no! My head is floating away!" Tidus and Wakka turned dilated eyes in what each thought was skyward. At that moment a bird erupted from the fuzzy suggestion of a nearby bush and flapped away. "There it goes!" Tidus shouted, pointing at the fleeing avian(a.k.a. Rikku's head)."Quick, Wakka help me catch it!"

Both teens turned to see that their older companion had dropped to the ground and was scooting around on his bottom. He paused in his abrasive activity and replied "I'd love to, brudda, but my legs just walked off." Tidus and Rikku glanced around at the empty camp. There was no sign of a pair of legs. Something went '_ppfft_!' behind their eyeballs, and a pair of yellow clad legs in green sandals snapped into view. "I see them!" Tidus said in a hushed whisper as he watched the errant limbs. The boy motioned Rikku to stay where she was and stealthily crept over to where the legs were inspecting a broad-leafed plant with flowers that bore a striking resemblance to brightly colored pairs of socks.

The young blitz ball star almost had the legs when they spotted him (okay, if you want to get technical, they sensed his approach through vibrations in the ground since they had no eyes).The legs split up and hopped off in different directions. The teen eventually cornered one of the limbs and was poised to tackle it when the other leg sneaked up behind him and kicked him in the rear.

"Sorry, brudda! That one's got my trick knee. It likes to act up in the damp." Wakka called from his seat under a tree. "I'll get them."

The man whistled and patted the ground energetically, calling "Here boys! C'mere! Good boys, come to daddy! Whose a good boy? Come on!"

Wakka grabbed a leg in each hand as soon as they got close enough. "I got them! Quick, help me put them back on!"

With Tidus' help, the process involved biting the end off, licking it, then sticking it back on. It required the kind of skill and luck possessed only by drunkards trying to find the keyhole at 3am…in the side window. "Okay Rikku, let's go get your head." Wakka said, standing up and narrowly missing the flock of winged feet flapping past. "Does anyone else smell corn chips?"

"Uh, about my head…" the small girl said apologetically, "It came back."

"Here, take this." Tidus said helpfully, struggling out of his shirt, a racy tune playing in the background. "It should help your head stay on." So, zipped up and hooded in Tidus' shirt, Rikku's head was now safe.

Body parts secured to their respective owners and spirits soaring high on large amounts of illegal substances the adventurers set off into the fog in search of civilization. Some time and multiple odd hallucinations later, the lost Guardians paused for a break in a clearing by a stream of the sort that seemed to exist solely to save lost explorers. These streams typically contain a bounty of fresh water, edible plants, and the occasional magical talking fish. This one also happened to sport a suspiciously magical sword stuck in a rock that possibly held the destiny of who ever pulled it free. An errant ray of light managed to break through the fog and strike the large diamond in the pommel, reflecting with a _tzing!_

Parched from spending the last few hours walking in circles and back tracking, Tidus and Company flung themselves down at the water's edge. There was no cupping the water or polite lapping. The trio plunged their heads in and slurped up the water with a sound like a draining bathtub. Crowed together on the bank, they bore a striking resemblance to a small herd of bovine, except they didn't have horns and, while they did jostle each other a little, they weren't crapping in the water as they drank.

Thirst quenched, the companions sat back, making faint sloshing noises. "Did you guys hear that?" Tidus asked, standing quickly. "Listen!" The blond gyrated sharply producing sloshing sounds.

For a few moments water and an empty stomach became the greatest source of entertainment in all of Spira. The trio jumped and wiggled around, giggling at the sounds coming from their stomachs. Things got a whole lot funnier because a full stomach can only take so much activity. They spent a further few minutes trying to laugh at each other while vomiting water.

Once Fun had run its course, Yuna's Guardians had a snack of edible plants. They had originally caught a few fish, but ended up throwing them back because they begged for their lives when Wakka tried to shove a stick in them for roasting.

"I never knew animals could talk." Rikku muttered in horror. "I mean lobsters and shrimp are boiled _alive_!" There was a long, uncomfortable silence as each one of them thought about their past meals…adding in dialogue from the main dishes. They sat in morbid silence, munching on their plants, which so far, showed no signs of intelligence.

Minds marinating in a highly potent brew of mixed narcotics, Tidus, Wakka, and Rikku involuntarily turned their attention to the cries of the animals around them. Something went 'click' and the background noise of animals getting on with their daily lives turned into conversations. Bird song turned out to be quite hostile shouts of 'This is my branch, push off!', 'Get way from my nest!', 'These berries are mine, you hear? Go find your own!', and 'Watch it! I can peck your eyes out!'. The fish were hard to understand because they gargled the water, but they were mostly concerned about large shadows and eating anything that wriggled. The small rodent-like mammals were mostly worried about large predatory birds, others stealing their nuts, eating, and finding places to hide.

On the other hand, the frogs turned out to be concerned with mating and finding mates. Neither one of them would be able to listen to the soft croaking on long nights and think it was beautiful ever again. Cries of 'Hey baby, over here!', Look how big my throat is!', 'Watch this hop!', 'Look at these legs!', and the occasional soft _poom_ of a throat exploding due to over inflation, filled the clearing. Suddenly aware of their audience, the animals ceased their chatter. Rikku, Tidus, and Wakka stared at the animals in goggle-eyed amazement. The animals stared back.

To the Guardians' utter surprise the gathered fauna broke into a brief musical number. The fish flipped and spit arcs of water while the frogs danced and sang a song about being nuts over some guy named 'Harry'. A small flock of wading birds did the can-can in the background, a troupe of squirrels performed acrobatics in the trees above the stream, and the turtles executed a synchronized swimming routine. The show ended with a bang when the lead frog exploded. The lost explorers applauded wildly. The animals quickly dispersed as if nothing had happened and the companions went on their way.

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You don't want to know what crickets sing about at night....

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	3. Chapter 3

*Big sigh of relief* I finally finished chapter 3! And so RB 18 comes to a close. I hope this chapter is as enjoyable as the first two. For those of you interested in FFXII viera fan art (of a humorous nature), please visit my Profile page for a link to my gallery. Thank you to all of you who patiently waited, or impatiently waited and didn't grumble too much, through the lengthy space between updates. I have mentioned before that I got a job in January and since then I have been working a lot more, so I don't have as much time to write anymore. I do keep a notebook with me for the slower time of the day to jot down ideas though, and I am starting to figure out how to juggle my time. Thanks for reading!

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****Random Bits 18**

**Chapter 3**

**:Setting **- A heavy fog has rolled in to envelop the small sea-side village of Kilika, preventing Yuna and her friends from making their way home after a long trip spent making the rounds to Spira's temples. Since the weather has rendered travel impossible, the group is stuck in Kilika until conditions improve. **:**

**:Location - Kilika Island - **Evening. Our heroes are tired and beginning to realized that they are lost. The effects of the herbs is wearing off. Everyone is beginning to suffer from withdrawals.

The narcotic induced pink clouds of Unreality had been burned away by metabolism. One minute the Guardians had been floating among the clouds, and the next they had found themselves rushing at speed straight for the cold, hard ground of Reality. The smack had been heard some ways off and even startled some birds. The forlorn travelers were left to stagger back from their herbal holiday as best they could.

_Food/food/Whatever Stew/hungry/feed me, _Wakka's stomach growled. The Blitzball Captain sighed and tried to push the thoughts away. He had begun to feel unusually irritable as they trudged through the persistent fog. He put it down to being hungry and tried not to snap at his companions.

Hunger could do that to you. It was like being stuck in a car on a long road with nothing to see, the same CD that's been playing for the past three hours, the same four people you have spent the last four days with, nothing to talk about because all possible conversation had been exhausted an hour after leaving, and the knowledge that there are still five more hours to go. Tempers begin to run extremely short, expressions take on that classic pinched, sour look and everything everyone else does is annoying. Not to mention the multiple private fantasies of homicide.

Wakka wasn't the only one having problems. Tidus was a ball of terrified nerves inclined to scream at loud noises and sudden movements before diving into the nearest bush, while Rikku had the feeling that they were being watched. She glared suspiciously at every bush, tree, and rock they passed. Everything was eyeballing her! The rocks, the trees, and that bird. Rikku was in a paranoid state of mind usually only seen in war survivors, drug dealers, and the occasional granny.

The clump of vines blocking a narrow animal track hadn't stood a chance. Rikku had bounced up to it like an angry bantam and started shouting.

"You eyeballing me?!" she demanded, slapping at the vines, which rolled with the punch, but offered no reply. "Not talking, eh? I know you are spying on us! Who do you work for? You want a piece of this?"

Wakka wisely kept Silent. It's best just to smile and nod when encountering people in this frame of mind. If, however, you do become engaged in two-way conversation, you had better do some mental proof-reading of any comments, questions, or statements, unless you want to spend two hours listening to the individual talk about how a) the government is watching the person's every move, and has tapped their phone line, b) how Fildor "Gut Slicer" Gigglesmore is looking for them, or c) how the neighbors are shining lights into their bedroom window and playing loud music _just_ to keep them up at night.

The small Al Bhed girl had loosed a war cry that would have put the strongest Ronso to shame, and attacked. She had shown no mercy, and left nothing but the world's ugliest salad in her wake. Wakka had fished Tidus out of the bushes, and they had continued on.

The wood reluctantly revealed an abandoned campsite a few hours later. Tired and hungry, the trio limped, shuffled, and sidled into the little camp. "Look!" Wakka said, pointing excitedly at a lumpy pot near the burned out remains of a fire. "Who ever was here has food!"

There was a brief scuffle as Wakka and Rikku fought over the pot in the hopes of getting the last bit of whatever was in it. Tidus screamed as a piece of dandelion down floated by, and shrieked again as the battered pot (the victim of opposing forces of direction) flew by his head and struck something in the shadowy bushes, producing a humorous _bong! _

"Great, now we don't have _anything_ to eat!" Wakka snarled, flopping on the ground hard. "Well, we could always eat someone." Rikku suggested sarcastically. "Good idea," Wakka replied curtly, "we can eat the weakest, scrawniest one first!" Rikku glared at the red-haired man hotly. "I was thinking more of eating the _fattest _person first, since we could eat off of him longer…!" Rikku's train of thought petered out as a heavier, faster moving one hit the tracks.

"Wait, if there is a campsite, then that means someone else is here. We aren't alone in the woods!" The Al Bhed girl spun around suddenly and grabbed Tidus by the straps of his pants. "I told you we were being watched! I _told_ you!" she shouted, shaking the blond violently. Tidus screamed and trembled so hard that he blurred. Laughing manically, Rikku let him go and danced around the little clearing, chanting the 'I Told You So' song (which was also on Auron's list of Things I Hate Most, along with the Lucky Dance, the Victory Dance, and the phrase 'Rin Inn/Shop').

Tidus took the opportunity to Flee with a shriek. Sometimes, it's the best thing to do, like when you see Uncle Willy 'Pull My Finger' Bobbinsocks heading straight for you with an extended finger and a calculating grin. The teen dove into the closest shrub, and peered anxiously out between the leaves. Tidus experienced a brief moment of blissful safety, until he realized that he wasn't alone in his hiding place.

Slowly he turned, and came face to face with a widely smiling man. A shiver started at the base of Tidus' spine and shot upwards like a rocket. A smile was a normal feature found on faces, it was just that the faces usually had more… lips, weren't distressingly bloated and purple, and didn't have eyes like two runny eggs. Come to think of it, people weren't supposed to be puffy, either. Tidus had only ever seen bulging rolls around joints like that on balloon animals, and sausages.

Tidus erupted from the bush with a screech like a cat being stepped on. Rikku was nearly mown down as the young man whirred past with a shriek of "Dead guy!" His headlong flight was hindered by a tree, which rose up out of nowhere (in accordance with cosmic laws) when he foolishly looked over his shoulder to see if the horror in the bushes was chasing him. Sufficiently stunned, Tidus lay still and watched the small stars orbiting his head, which showed up nicely against the darkening fog clinging to where the sky should have been.

Grabbing a stick incase there was anything interesting to poke, Wakka pushed aside the leaves of the plant. "Hey, he's right! There is a dead body!" he said, not even wincing at the redundancy, not that he would have known what a redundancy was. Most people don't, thus retarded terms like 'baby chick(a chick _is_ a baby chicken/bird)', 'close proximity( proximity _means_ close)', and 'genuine imitation (which means a real fake and is not really a redundancy, just a poor choice of wording)' have come to be.

"It doesn't look like he's been dead too long." Wakka said, prodding the ballooned out corpse with his stick, just to satisfy the urge. "You know what that means?" Rikku said in a tense voice as an earlier train of thought skipped back onto the tracks. "It means that whoever is out there, watching our every move, is a _murderer_!"

Wakka, still irritable (and hungry despite the gently decomposing hunk of meat in front of him), replied "Well, I hope he or she has some food with them 'cause I'm starving. And, whoever they are, I hope they are better company than this guy." At that moment, the stick found a weak spot in the purpling skin. The bloated flesh split open like an over-ripe fruit dropped from a tall building and released a blast of corpse gases. The immediate area was suddenly swarming with flies. Wakka and Rikku staggered back, gagging and retching.

"Oh, gross!" Rikku gagged, "he's all runny on the inside!" Beside her, Wakka dropped a custard (blew chunks, hurled, spewed, screamed at his shoes, etc.). "Let's get out of here!" The Al Bhed girl said carefully, incase her Whatever Stew felt like suddenly making a return trip. The blitz ball captain nodded, putting his withdraw symptoms aside to address the more pressing need to be very far away from some very undesirable company.

Grabbing Tidus (who had been brought around by the stench of a lot of microbes doing their job) and bolting out of the clearing, the lost travelers plunged into the fog. They ran blindly, barely dodging the various obstacles that suddenly loomed in front of them, their flight punctuated by Tidus' screams. In the grips of horror, the three Guardians tore through the woods, scattering animals and trampling foliage. Several yet undiscovered species of plants, which incidentally held the cures for most of Spira's deadliest diseases in their juices, were eradicated along with a nest of a newly evolved species of rodent (which would have become Spira's newest pet craze). The female survived, but seeing as how this species of rodent the new mothers ate their mates after giving birth for extra nutrients, the species died out.

An Ochu almost met a similar end. The massive plant fiend had taken some time off from terrorizing humans to rethink what it really meant to be a fiend, and maybe get a fresh start at life and a new philosophy. It was just coming to the conclusion that maybe humans weren't the enemy and peaceful cohabitation could be possible, when out of the undergrowth burst a pack of rabid humans.

The fiend was so taken aback that it remained rooted to the spot as the next few seconds were filled with confused cries and wildly thrashing limbs. It ended abruptly, and in the silence that followed, the mildly stunned forest lord reviewed the strange occurrence.

There it was, having a peaceful moment of contemplation, when three humans had attacked. Then again, the Ochu couldn't really apply the word 'attacked' to the situation. Not properly, anyway. The biggest human had climbed over it, giving it a smart kick in the stamen, the smallest one had bitten one of its vines, and the third one had just stood there and screamed at it before crawling under it and stepping on its roots. Oddly, the humans hadn't used any kind of magic or weapons, and hadn't actually _harmed_ it. So, with the distractions gone, the Ochu returned to its internal struggle on where it stood with humans, and unsteadily lumbered off.

Wakka, Tidus, and Rikku's undirected flight sent them hurtling through the woods without any idea of where they were running to. At the moment the 'to' didn't matter, because it was the 'away from' that was the important bit. As they crashed through the fog enveloped woods, burning off the last effects of the herbs, the sun gave up its battle to hang out on the horizon for a few more hours and set. Lost in the woods, in the fog, at night, the trio eventually slowed to a creep. Being lost in the dark while pursued by a killer tends to bring people together, and seek safety in numbers (usually because the more of you there are, the less chance _you_ have of being picked off).

To ensure that no one got (anymore) lost, the pathetic explorers fell back on the ancient techniques learned in childhood. They formed a line and held hands, each of them understanding that this incident would never be spoken of again. Wakka was the Leader since he was an islander, and therefore, it was reasoned, should know everything there was to know about islands. Tidus was bringing up the rear because he was filling in the position of Idiot, who always got picked off first in every 'Lost in (insert location of choice) ' movie. That left Rikku, the smallest, filling in the Lone Survivor role. This meant that if the group was attacked, Tidus would get eaten right away, his screams alerting the party that danger was near, Wakka would die the valiant death of the Leader (i.e rush up in a futile attempt to rescue Tidus by poking the Threat with a sharp, pointy stick and also get eaten), and Rikku would leg it away fast, and show up at the closest village days later raving about monsters.

Holding hands to stay together was a stroke of genius, but like all great ideas, it had its drawbacks because 1) you have two feet to trip with, so therefore you must have two hands to catch yourself with, 2) walking one-handed in the dark, with two feet to trip with doubles your chances of a hard fall, and 3) if your other hand happens to be holding the hand of another person who also happens to be holding someone else's hand, when the middle person goes down, three people have ,collectively, only two hands to try to stop the fall. Because of universal laws, and luck, the person in the middle will undoubtedly land on the person in front. Of course, if you happen to fall down a hill, the 'leader' and the 'caboose' will land on the monkey in the middle. And so it happened.

"Hey, I think I see lights!" Wakka exclaimed in a hushed whisper.

"Where?" Tidus and Rikku replied in unison, turning this way and that as they Scanned the hazy darkness.

"Right there!" Wakka said, jabbing a stubby digit in the direction of several dim lights.

"I don't see them." Rikku replied doubtfully.

"There!" the former Captain of the Aurochs snapped, thrusting his arm out. It would have created a perfect line to sight along, had he not used the finger on the hand that was currently holding Rikkus' hand. It would have been even better if he had not been so exasperated that he flung his arm out with more violence than necessary. That simple action created a whip-like effect that sent Rikku and Tidus swinging out into the empty air over what was, had there been time for a second look, not a shadow, but a steep, grassy incline.

Of course, no one had the common sense to let go. It comes from deeply ingrained parental teachings. Going to the store? Hold on to mom/dad's hand so you don't get lost. Crossing the street? Hold hands incase a car comes(which serves no purpose other than to give the driver the option of taking out two people at once, and gaining a total of 100 points in Road Bingo).

The three Guardians got a very abrupt lesson in physics. They tumbled down the slope in a chorus of yelps as they encountered trees, and the occasional muffled thump as their falls were gentled by the soft forest creatures that didn't get out to the way in time. After a last few bounces, the battered companions came to a halt in a relatively flat area. The silence was broken by a spattering of groans as the small party slowly assessed the damage.

"Hey, Rikku, do fingers usually bend like this?" Wakka asked the blond girl, holding up a hand for inspection. His pinky finger was bent at an unnatural angle. Rikku squinted at it. "Uh…it looks okay to me." she said, not wanting to alarm the man. "But, uh…Oh, look at that!" she exclaimed, pointing off in a random direction. Wakka turned to look, and Rikku grabbed his hand and twisted…

Tidus sat up and rubbed the back of his head. It felt like it had been sat on. Come to think of it, he vaguely remembered a large, yellow clad rear falling right towards him on the way down the hill. He was going to have nightmares about that one. The boy looked over his shoulder to see what was digging so uncomfortably into the small of his back. His hand encountered a hard, smooth surface.

…the finger snapped back into place with a crack, eliciting a shriek from Wakka. "Hey, shut up! Look at this!" Tidus called excitedly, ignoring the blubbering. "I found this weird horizontal rock." Rikku limped over to investigate. "Hey, yeah! Look at that, it's perfectly flat on top. And look, there's another one on top of it."

There was one on top of that one, too. And another, and on top of that one, was what looked like two boots. Out of each boot rose a short tube which disappeared under a dark cloak-like shroud.

"It's the _murderer_!" Rikku whimpered, as the tiny group drew closer together. A demonic voice roared from the gloom with all the rage of the underworld "Where in the Farplane have you been?!" The fog was suddenly blown away, revealing…a very exasperated Auron standing on the steps leading up to Kilika Temple.

They screamed.

End.

* * *

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